When Is An Over-Active Imagination Not Just An Over-Active Imagination?
Jun 20 '04
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The house I grew up in was a Cape Cod style house which meant the upstairs was right under the roof of the house. When I was younger, it was completely unfinished. My bedroom was on the first floor, next to my parents. I can remember going up there and sneaking around looking for Christmas presents and getting a creeped-out feeling. It wasn’t guilt at doing something I shouldn’t; it was a feeling that something was there.
My mother eventually had one side of the attic finished off as a sewing and crafts room for herself. This room encompassed the stairs which came up from the first floor. At the base of the stairs was a heavy door, which I usually had to slam to get to close whenever I went up or down. Wood paneling surrounded old, but sturdy stairs. As I walked up the stairs, all I had a view of was the slanted roof at the top until I was about two steps from the top, and then the room opened up. It was all done in wood paneling, so in general it was a rather dark room with just one window at the end for natural light.
Eventually my campaign to have the other half of the attic made into a room for myself (much larger than the oversized closet I had downstairs) paid off and when I was thirteen we had that done. Never one to be content with bleakness, I had the room painted a bright yellow. My only window faced the front of the house, which was north, so any natural light in my room was fairly scarce.
Having the roof right above me was great. Instead of a room shaped like a box, my walls were about three or four feet high, at which point it met the roof and slanted upwards to a small ceiling in the center. This arch was perfect for mounting posters, and I soon had it covered from the wall which separated my room from my mother’s work-room and the stairs to the wall at the front of the house.
Since we didn’t want to lose all of the storage space behind the walls, my parents had removable panels put in to reach the area behind the walls. These were simply pieces of plywood which were held in place by wall trim at the bottom and a catch at the top. We had things like our Christmas decorations stored behind my walls, so it wasn’t a regular thing for us to go behind the walls, except for the one next to my window at the front of the house. I had a bookcase and all of my board games stored there, so I was in there fairly regularly.
I can remember the weird stuff happening pretty early on after I moved up there, but I dismissed it. Numerous times when I’d open the door and walk into that room, on of the panels would be open. I figured it had to do with air displacement or that someone hadn’t closed them all the way, and simply put them back in place. One time I remember walking into the room and having all three burst open as I walked in. Again, I dismissed it.
Even when the creepy feelings hit me, I never quite put everything together. I’d be working at my desk, or watching the television or listening to my stereo and I’d feel like something was right outside the door. I dreaded going over to open it. There was never anything there, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I generally played it off to an over-active imagination.
One of the posters I had up was of John Lennon. This was in the first few years following his death, and it was one of my favorite shots of him from his later years playing the guitar. One night I can remember waking up in the middle of the night and I was sitting up. I wasn’t sure if I had screamed in my sleep or not, but I was now wide awake and mesmerized by that poster. I moved it to the other side of the room the next day so I wouldn’t be directly looking at it.
The culmination of all of these antics seemed to come one day when my parents were out and I was in the room by myself. I heard the door at the base of the stairs slam close, and I figured my parents had come home. I heard steps on the stairs, but they never seemed to come closer and seemed more like a shuffle than a step. I knew I had heard more than the fourteen steps it took to come up to my room, and still there was that shuffling step noise. I counted additionally all the way up to twelve, knowing that my parents were not on the other side of that door. I was hardly breathing at this point, petrified by fear. My brain finally went into overdrive and I screamed “Cut it the fuck out!” The shuffling-stepping noise stopped. I never heard a door close. I didn’t come out of my room until I knew someone else was home and the next day put a lock on the door upstairs, for all the good that would have done.
From that day forward, I never had a problem of finding the panels to the area behind my walls open.
In fact, there were never any more incidents like this, but I always had a certain fear of being in that room in my house. There were times when I was more creeped-out than others, sure someone else was up there with me. I have two very good friends who died when I was young. One when I was in high school, and the other a few years later. When I’d get the feeling, I cried out for them in my brain. Especially after Danny, someone I’d been close to for some time, was killed in a car accident in 1987, I would get the creeped-out feeling of someone else being in the room and would get a comforting feeling wash over me soon after I cried out for him. It was as if he walked into the room and somehow was protecting me and making me feel safe. Only then could I fall asleep.
I was still living in those rooms upstairs when my oldest daughter was born. There were times I was nervous about leaving her in her crib up there, but by now many of the early feelings of being so paralyzed by fright in the rooms was fading, written off to that same over-active imagination. It wasn’t until my daughter was three or four and began talking about the “ghost” that lived at Nana’s house (we’d moved by then) that I seriously believe what I experienced was not my imagination. She did this all on her own; there was no prompting from me and I’d never spoken of what had happened to me up until the point that she brought it up.
My parents moved out of the house about six years ago now. Sometimes I think about going by and asking the new owners if they’ve had trouble with the panels upstairs....
© 2004 Patti Aliventi
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Member: Patti Aliventi
Location: Mount Washington Valley, New Hampshire
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